Take Me For A Ride | Page 3

in the United States of America
To Patsy Sims--inspired teacher, intriguing storyteller, intrepid journalist.
Author's Note
Names in the following story have been changed, except for those already mentioned in the press.
Contents
1. Bicycle Ride--Walden 2. Zapped! 3. The Joining 4. The Community 5. Bicycle Ride--Lenox 6. The Garden 7. Money Mantra 8. Fast Leader 9. Off The Map 10. Bicycle Ride--Utica 11. Displaced 12. Thwarted Escape 13. Breakdown 14. Bicycle Ride--St. Ignes 15. The Enchanted Taco 16. Ride To Heaven 17. On High 18. Where's My Tribe? 19. I'm Okay 20. The Last Supper 21. Bicycle Ride--The Continental Divide Epilogue
Appendix A: Excerpts From WOOF! Appendix B: Excerpts From "Welcome To Lakshmi" Appendix C: Excerpts From "Sophisticated Sexuality" Appendix D: Excerpts From Rama's Ads and Brochures

1. Bicycle Ride--Walden
After I left Rama's inner circle in 1985, I occasionally bicycled to Walden Pond, where I read about Thoreau's experiment with self-reliance. My seven years in the cult of Rama--Dr. Frederick Lenz, who was known early on as Atmananda--had deeply shaken my confidence. Atmananda often assured me that I was possessed by Negative Forces, that I was barely able to function in the real world, and that I was fortunate he did not drop me off at a mental institution. I met him in 1978, when I was seventeen.
Thoreau helped me recall a time, before Atmananda, when I was strong and self-reliant. I had been an avid cyclist. Pedaling thousands of miles each year helped strengthen both my legs and self-esteem. Throughout my teenage years bicycling and self-confidence were inextricably linked, and I grew to believe I could ride anywhere, under any conditions. I tried to approach life with a similar gusto, which may explain why, in 1979, Atmananda invited me to move with him to southern California to start a spiritual centre. From 1979 to 1981, I lived with him by the cliffs of La Jolla where I witnessed his rise to power. Today, in 1993, he controls the minds of several hundred computer consultants, businessmen, doctors, and lawyers. Each year he extracts from them roughly ten million dollars.
As I gazed at Walden Pond in search of calm, the wind spawned new waves, and the surface swelled with complexity. I recalled what Atmananda had said after I returned from a five-day bike trip in California. He announced in front of other disciples that my aura was dark. He also said that I had been attacked by nocturnal, mountain-dwelling Entities which "cause neurosis and psychosis, obliterate lifetimes of spiritual evolution, and can possess your soul."
Atmananda's Entity-prevention program included studying with a fully enlightened teacher, meditating regularly, and avoiding solitary excursions into nature. Yet in the spring of 1986, nearly one year after I left him, I reminded myself that I would rather be possessed in my world than potentially perfect in his. I planned to pedal across America not with an exorcist, but with a puppy.
On May 31, 1986, as warm, moist air pushed pockets of fog over Walden Pond, I lifted the four-month-old Siberian husky, Nunatak, into the doggie-carrier. The carrier rested on top of the bicycle trailer, attached to the frame of my 12-speed. Strong headwinds soon strained my muscles, shook the lush canopy of foliage, and pelted me with large drops of rain. As I began the journey west, the front tire raced through puddles while my mind raced through painful memories and questions. How had my years with Atmananda affected me? Why was it so difficult to leave him? What was it about my past that led me to him?

2. Zapped!
"Lights," said my father and for a moment, except for the phosphorescent hands of the clock on the wall, the room went black. With a flip of a switch, he suddenly reappeared: a tall, thin man with thick glasses, standing beside the glowing enlarger. As a child I sat for hours under a dim yellow light, mesmerized by images appearing on paper submerged in trays filled with smelly liquid. Yellow, my father taught me, has no apparent effect on the light-sensitive specks coating photographic paper.
The unorthodox images which leapt from the walls of our house seemed as eerie as the darkroom experience itself: there was a photograph of a llama's head as viewed through a distorting fish-eye lens, there was a photograph of a shredded poster of a man's face, and there were many abstract photos which seemed to defy description. My father, a production manager at a New York publishing company, perhaps saw the world in a different light than his peers.
My mother was an elementary school teacher with black hair and sometimes kind, sometimes intense eyes. A generous and caring woman, she put her career on hold for more than a decade to raise a family. She met my father in upstate New York on a hike sponsored by an outing